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Tag: apple tv

Still happy with the phone. Does what it says on the tin. The beauty of it is that when paired with an EE contract, you’re getting a good all-rounder.

In many areas I’ve visited, I often get between 40Mbs – 100Mbs 4G connectivity. When connected to Wi-Fi the device switches to Wi-Fi Calling which is a significant battery saver (unlike Three’s implementation of Wi-Fi calling which will only kick in if there is insufficient cellular strength). Plus there is the new higher quality HD voice calling – available only through EE at this time. Haven’t had a chance to give that a go as yet since it requires the other person to also have another iPhone 8 (or better). Plus EE fully supports Visual Voicemail too.

I had a chance to give the free inclusive London Underground calling function which kicked in automatically as soon as I got to the platform at Waterloo’s Bakerloo line station. Wi-Fi just kicked in automatically – no need to configure or select the Wi-Fi hotspot – It Just Works(tm). Really handy.

The quality of the camera is something I’m still undecided on. Yes, it is better than the iPhone 7 Plus, but many photos are still very “painting-like” in comparison to say, the Galaxy Note 8 or the forthcoming Google Pixel 2 XL. I’ve enclosed a small sample of unedited photos, shot in the new HEIC format and exported to JPEG.

(Click any of the following photos to get full-size image – but a reminder – all these photos are copyright and I have all rights reserved on them – if you want to use them, please get in touch first)

The video quality looks okay, but I’ve found that with the release of MacOS High Sierra, Photos does not automatically import videos. If I AirDrop a video to my Mac, it inexplicitly saves it as H.264 – especially odd as one can only shoot in HEVC at 4K 60fps. I’m hoping that whatever is causing the block in automatic video importing via Photos/Photostream will be fixed in an iOS or MacOS update shortly. I will say I am particularly disappointed in Apple for not releasing an update to Final Cut Pro X to enable HEVC before or after iOS 11/iPhone 8 was released.

Battery life is good – especially if the phone is using Wi-Fi Calling – and having bought a Belkin induction charger, I just plonk it on the charging pad each evening that sits just under my monitor. And I can continue to use the phone while it’s charging – and just pick it up without entangling myself in wires.

Oh, and EE’s 6 months free Apple Music and streaming data is good. One has to make sure that if you have let your direct-with-Apple Apple Music subscription expire, after applying the EE offer, you’ll need to log out of iCloud Music Library and log back in otherwise weird stuff will happen within your desktop iTunes application.

Apple Watch Series 3 with Cellular (LTE)

Very happy with the new series 3 watch. It’s faster than its predecessor (app switching and general app usage is now usable!), has more storage, and the new cellular capability means that I can make and receive phone calls in the toilet(!) or on the way to the local supermarket to pick up lunch whilst leaving my phone at my desk. Yes, the watch is still tethered to one’s iPhone, but it gives the watch a much bigger range away from it. One problem I’ve noticed is that whenever I enter and leave the Wimbledon branch of Sainsbury’s, I always set the alarm off. It can’t be the watch, surely?

Apple TV 4K

As a 4K/UHD owner, getting access to 4K content can be a little tricky. So Apple’s foray into the 4K space was always going to be welcome. Especially the free upgrade to 4K streaming of existing iTunes Movie library content.

The first thing I noticed was that ALL video had significant motion blurring. This was because my LG 4K TV has a number of picture “enhancements” that I had to find and turn off. I’ve had the TV for over two years and I hadn’t even noticed them buried within the myriad of options. But turning them off – including disabling 4K upscaling on my amplifier/HDMI switch – did the trick.

I don’t have HDR, so the video output from the Apple TV 4K is always 4K SDR. And with the TV’s motion enhancements out the way, the picture quality is excellent to the point I’m using the Apple TV’s Netflix app as my default, along with NOW TV (whose app is now looking a little decrepit now and isn’t near as useful as that on the LG TV, but Apple TV’s performance is far better) and BBC iPlayer. Like NOW TV, the BBC iPlayer too is looking a little long in the tooth and really should get an interface update to make it more like other platforms. That said, Apple probably enforces UI policies on these things, so there’s that.

Are 4K iTunes movies worth it? The answer is: yes. They do look better to my eye than HD. I do not care about HDR. My TV doesn’t support it and even if it did, given the age, it probably wouldn’t support the right type.

I’ve relegated my forth generation Apple TV to the bedroom which is ruddy useful as I can pick up where I left off upstairs or downstairs – whenever or wherever I feel the most comfortable at the time.

MacOS High Sierra

It’s okay-ish, but shutting down the 2017 MacBook Pro attached to the LG UltraFine 4K monitor results in the monitor showing a cyan screen every time. Automatic Time Machine backups are rather spurious – I have to untick and tick the automatic backup flag to get it to work, only for the backup to complete and the Time Machine Systems Preferences panel telling me the next backup will only happen when the disk is next connected. It’s almost always connected! Then there is the issue of Photos and iCloud Photo Library’s Photostream. Not all photos transferred automatically from the phone, and absolutely no videos transfer. I have to AirDrop them and import. And using AirDrop to High Sierra does not result in HEVC video files for some bizarre reason!

While Apple did not directly get me there, they pushed me in the right direction. It turn out that if you go to Settings -> Audio and Video and set Surround Sound to Stereo, you’ll be able to hear the audio commentary tracks on the episodes of iTunes Breaking Bad Deluxe Edition.

Why it doesn’t work when set to Best Quality Available or Dolby Digital I don’t know, but it sounds (haha) like a bug. While you can swipe down during playback of video, to change some audio options – whatever you select doesn’t affect the audio track at all – you must select Stereo from the Settings menu.

When I told Apple about this, they wanted me to do a complete wipe and reset of the Apple TV. I politely told them no. Apple can go away and do their own tests – unless Apple want to pay me £500/hour to test their kit for them. That’s my professional fee.

This is with tvOS 10.11, the latest publicly released “stable” version.

I also just want to say that the online chat support from Apple is nearly useless. In the end I had to wait for a phone call, which failed, then I was put through – then finally figured out the issue – then received a further 4-5 automated calls at random intervals.

I was watching A Very Long Engagement via iTunes on the Apple TV, and was trying to get Siri to disable the second set of subtitles (since it’s a French film, it comes with English subtitles embedded within the film itself and cannot be disabled – but despite this, apparently a separate subtitles track exists and displayed).

This was the result:

I highly recommend going to Settings -> Audio & Video -> Subtitle Language = Off. It’s set to Auto by default. Don’t bother asking Siri, she lies. After the above failure, she eventually understood what I said and told me that subtitles were off. She lied! So I disabled subtitles in the Settings menu and all was well.